Musings on Plato's Shadow - a photo on Flickriver

Musings on Plato's Shadow

            I am one who cannot take a telescopic trip to the moon without at least dropping by Plato Crater for a short visit. I just find it so visually appealing. The evening of February 2nd this photo found Plato bathed in early morning light, with only the western two-thirds of its crater floor illuminated. The view was especially striking for the dramatic shadows the peaks of Plato’s eastern rim cast across the crater’s smooth lava floor. Looking at them in this photo, I was reminded of the jagged peaks that tower over Moorea’s Ōpūnohu Bay, which, although magnificent, are considerably smaller than the peaks of Plato’s eastern rim. That set me musing over ways to conceptualize the heights of those peaks. I have read that three of these peaks tower 1.5, 1.8, and 2.1 kilometers above the floor of Plato. Now that might seem like a lot, towering almost 6,900 feet (higher than any peak in the Eastern USA), but then I compared those values to other things I read about Plato. For example, consider that Plato has no central peak. Why not? It’s because the floor of Plato is buried under 2.6 km of lava, enough to overtop even the tallest of the eastern rim peaks, were it in the center of Plato. That is a LOT of lava. Plato is 101 km in diameter. Considering the mass of lava filling Plato as a cylinder of diameter 101 km and height of 2.6 km, that comes out around 20,830 cubic km of lava, maximum. (Somebody check my math: I’ve never excelled at math.) But consider another thing I have learned about Plato. See those tiny craterlets in its floor. The biggest of them, the one nearly in the center, that little sucker is about 2.7 km in diameter. THAT MAKES IT WIDER THAN THOSE PEAKS TOWER ABOVE IT.

Celestron EdgeHD 8 telescope, ZWO ASI290MM monochrome camera, Celestron Advanced VX mount.

Pre-processing of 3401 frame .ser file with PIPP. Best 10% of those video frames, stacked with AutoStakkert 3, wavelets processing with Registax 6, and final processing in Photoshop CC 2019.

Taken on: February 9, 2020

Tags:

Plato Crater

Moon

Selene

Lunar landscape

lunar terminator

Lunar

mare

Montes Alpes

Celestron Advanced VX Mount

Celestron 8 EdgeHD

ZWO ASI 290MM

MONOCHROME

black and white

B/W

craterlets « less

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